


Nothing Stands

by blanketed_in_stars



Series: 52 Weeks of Wolfstar [49]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Metamorphmagus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 16:05:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5423327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanketed_in_stars/pseuds/blanketed_in_stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I just realized we’re not going to make it through this.”</p>
<p>“What do you mean?”</p>
<p>“We might die.”</p>
<p>Remus thinks carefully and at last says, “You knew that.”</p>
<p>She nods. “But we—we really might, Remus.” None of the lights are on in the flat, and he can barely see her face, but her eyes shine. “Isn’t that funny?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Stands

**Author's Note:**

> Week 49
> 
> Title from _In Memoriam_ by Tennyson.

Remus sleeps on the love seat, which they magically lengthen so that he can stretch out without actually taking up any more space than it did before. It takes several tries and a few rather inventive curses, but they manage it, and store his two boxes of clothes and essential books underneath.

In the morning he cooks, and on days when nobody has a job for him, he sits up until Tonks comes back smelling of singed fabric and, once or twice, flowers. They have dinner, usually take-away from the Lebanese shop three blocks away. Remus is the only one in the flat, when he’s there at all, but it’s not so lonely as before, and he tells himself things are getting better.

And then Moody dies, and everything changes again.

———

He wakes to Tonks letting herself in quietly, which is strange, because a few hours ago he swore she went to bed. Remus intends to let her go about her business, but when he hears the shaky breathing and small, pained noises, he sits up. “What is it?”

Tonks gives a massive start and whips out her wand before falling back against the cupboard. “Shit—Remus,” she gasps. “Oh, Merlin.” She stows her wand back in her pocket and wipes quickly at her face. “Didn’t mean to wake you,” she says. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right,” he says over the back of the love seat. “Don’t apologize.”

“I’m just,” Tonks says, “um.” Her breath hitches and she covers her mouth with the back of her hand. “Just going to bed,” she gets out, and shuts herself in the bathroom.

Remus is waiting for her when she opens the door, with a cup of tea and a smile.

She takes the cup and laughs wetly, following him to the stools at the counter. “You drink too much tea,” she tells him.

“It seems to help,” he replies. “People keep drinking it, at any rate.” He hesitates, then decides it’s pointless not to ask now. “What’s wrong?” he asks. “Is it—is it Moody?”

Tonks takes a long drink before answering. “Partly.” She traces a scratch in the plastic countertop. “I just realized we’re not going to make it through this.”

“What do you mean?”

“We might die.”

Remus thinks carefully and at last says, “You knew that.”

She nods. “But we—we really might, Remus.” None of the lights are on in the flat, and he can barely see her face, but her eyes shine. “Isn’t that funny?”

It’s not, but Remus knows what she means. It’s hard to really feel the concrete reality of the possibility, even harder to reconcile it with being alive in the moment. “It is, a bit,” he says.

“And,” Tonks says, sounding as if she’s forcing herself to say the words, “even if we come out the other end, we won’t be the same.” She doesn’t seem to be looking for confirmation anymore. She turns to him, her lips trembling. “They didn’t even find a body.”

It doesn’t matter to Remus whether she’s talking about Moody or Sirius; it hurts just the same either way. How are they to ever have existed if there’s no proof but memories? He wrecked half the cottage on that question only a few months ago, and now Tonks asks it of him—not with words, no, but the meaning is clear—and he still doesn’t have an answer.

But she doesn’t need one. “There was a Muggle, I can’t remember who—he was dying, and his wife said, ‘I want to go too.’ And he said, ‘We are all going.’” Tonks sniffs. “But I don’t want to go.”

“You won’t,” Remus promises her, though he shouldn’t make these promises, not with how they’ve turned out in the past. But he can’t help himself; he has to believe it for her. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Tonks isn’t fooled, but she gives a watery smile. “Of course not,” she says, “and neither are you.”

———

“I got an owl from Kingsley,” Remus says around his toothbrush, “and he wants—”

“Finish brushing first,” Tonks says, “I can’t understand you.”

Remus remembers saying the same thing to Sirius. He spits, rinses, and comes out of the bathroom knotting his tie. “Kingsley wants me to talk to a few of the Muggle liaisons,” he says, “see if they’ve given any more thought to—” He stops dead in the middle of the kitchen, staring.

Tonks looks up from buttering a slice of toast. “To?” she prompts. “To what—oh.” She gives a small and rather self-conscious smile.

Except she isn’t—well, Remus thinks, it’s not that she isn’t herself, but she certainly doesn’t look it. At the moment she looks like a young man with blue-tipped hair and very light freckles. But she is still obviously Tonks, as obviously if she’d merely changed clothes.

Remus has seen her in disguise before, of course. But always as a woman. He clears his throat. “Er—all right.” He moves to make his own breakfast of porridge and cinnamon.

From behind him, Tonks says, “All right?”

“Yes, why not?” He chuckles. “I’ll admit I’m surprised, but it’s not entirely inconceivable. I’d say it’s even to be expected, in this line of work.”

“Oh.” Several seconds pass. “It’s—it’s not for work,” she says. “It’s not a disguise, or anything like that.”

Remus sets his spoon down. “If it’s not a disguise, then what is it?” he asks, turning.

Tonks chews on the inside of her cheek, screwing up her face in something less like embarrassment and more like uncertainty. She meets his gaze, though, with indigo eyes that seem sure enough. “It’s just me. I felt like this today.”

Somehow, he understands, at least a bit. “So are you—I mean, what should I call—”

“Call me whatever you like,” she says, and grins, “as long as it’s not Nymphadora.”

Fifteen minutes later Remus leaves to talk to the Muggle liaisons and Tonks goes off to the Ministry, and they don’t speak about it again until late that evening. Tonks still looks like—herself, Remus supposes. They’re eating falafel out of a little paper box and he can’t keep his eyes from tracing her face over and over again, surprised each time by how different yet familiar it is.

“Didn’t you know it’s not polite to stare?” Tonks says finally. Her voice is different, too, though he barely noticed this morning—close to her usual one, but not quite the same.

“Sorry.” Remus switches to looking at his hands. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

She shrugs. “If it would help, I could do a picture if you’ve got one. That way you could see that it’s just me, even wearing someone else’s skin.”

Remus blinks. “Are you wearing someone else’s skin right now?”

“No, this is all me. But I can do photos easily. It’s a standard part of Concealment and Disguise in training.”

He considers it for a moment. “I’m not sure if I have a good picture,” he says.

“Almost anything will do,” she tells him.

So he rummages around in the boxes beneath the love seat until he finds the photograph, the same one that sat on the bookshelf in his old bedroom. Remus, laughing at something outside the frame, and Sirius, smiling at Remus.

Tonks takes the photo and her eyes widen in recognition. “D’you want me to do you?” she asks.

Remus shakes his head. “Best not. One of me is more than enough.” The implication, the only alternative, is an awkward weight on his tongue, and he wonders if he ought to take the picture back and pack it away again. But stopping him is the half-conscious truth that he wants to see just how well Tonks will imitate. Will it be as if Sirius has materialized in this little flat in Soho? Or will it be false and transparent? And which will hurt more?

It’s clear enough that Tonks also feels the weight of the implication, but she nods and looks back at the photo, furrowing her brow.

Looking away, Remus studies his hands again. He knows by now that Tonks prefers, when changing more than her hair or nose, to be unobserved, and this is one transformation that he wouldn’t watch in any case.

“Ready,” Tonks says after about thirty seconds, in a voice that is both hers and not.

Remus looks up and the air exits his lungs. The person sitting across from him is a young Sirius to the last hair, with ear and eyelash and slightly curled lip all in place. And yet—the person looking out from those grey eyes is a stranger in the body. The hands don’t tap the counter but rest still. The shoulders, always so straight and strong, hunch ever so slightly inward.

All the same, it’s enough to make Remus dizzy.

“Remus?” says the Sirius-stranger. “Are you all right?”

Remus tears his gaze away and waves a hand. “If you could,” he rasps, and swallows. “If you could change back.” Quickly he presses trembling fingers to his closed eyes and wipes away the moisture there.

When Tonks speaks again, it’s her old voice—the male one. “I’m sorry,” she says, sounding horrified. “Remus, I didn’t think—”

“No,” he grinds out, “no, I’m the one who didn’t think. It’s not your fault.” He can feel her touching his shoulder and opens his eyes to dark blue hair. He smiles weakly. “It’s you,” he says. “I see what you meant. You’re not—the person, whoever it may be. It’s always you inside.”

“How do you feel?” Tonks asks.

It’s a difficult question, with true answers ranging from disappointed to somewhat frightened. All Remus is sure of is that he might possibly lose his dinner. “I’ll be fine,” he says, and he doesn’t think he’s lying.

Tonks still appears worried, her freckled face pinched. “I’m sorry,” she repeats. “I shouldn’t have done it.”

“I shouldn’t have asked,” Remus insists. Looking at the way she’s grimacing, possibly more upset than he is, he knows—“It was wrong. It wasn’t fair to you.”

She doesn’t seem to know what to say to that.

Remus takes the photograph back and studies it a moment, almost as if he’s trying to find Tonks in the true Sirius. But there’s nothing there, no other self, and less clarity than he might have hoped. The gloss of the paper makes the laughing face fade into two dull dimensions, and Sirius might as well be in a Muggle still-frame for all the life he possesses.

**Author's Note:**

> "We are all going" comes from William McKinley's last words.
> 
> The hills are shadows, and they flow  
> From form to form, and nothing stands;  
> They melt like mist, the solid lands,  
> Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
> 
> — _In Memoriam_ by Tennyson


End file.
